This is part two of three, recapping the workshop with Eiji Otsuka, manga writer and Kobe Design University professor. Held at Otaku Lounge, Otsuka-sensei and his student Chiharu Nakashima (a professional mangaka in her own right) gave us a two-day crash course on manga storytelling.

Last weekend, I was very lucky to be able to attend and participate in an inspiring two-day workshop led by manga writer and Kobe Design University professor Eiji Otsuka, of MPD Psycho and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery fame. Held at Otaku Lounge, Otsuka-sensei and his student Chiharu Nakashima (a professional mangaka in her own right) gave us a crash course on manga storytelling that entirely blew my mind.

I really felt like this is the type of thing Love Love Hill tends to be really interested in, so I wanted to write a bit of a recap of my experience and share some of the lesson here 😀

I’ve broken it down into the two days and then one more entry about my own thoughts and what I synthesized most out of it. I am probably not going to delve too deeply into individual points in the actual lesson, because the presentation was so dense and to be honest I am not really sure how to do it without mass hand gesturing and visual aids, lol. I can only try my best to explain it in words here, I’m sorry. Maybe for another time.

edit: Now peppered with bad cell phone pics of the handout that we were given! Otsuka-sensei had this all in a Powerpoint presentation where we were able to see it much larger, sorry it looks so terrible, and also HAS MY TERRIBLE JUVENILE NOTES ALL OVER IT. Some of it is in French because the presentation was in French, I’m not gonna bother translating. Anyways I hope it will help to illustrate some of the more confusing points.

DAY ONE: An Introduction to the Usage of Cinematographic Language in the Art of Manga